{"id":56589,"date":"2025-05-12T16:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/?p=56589"},"modified":"2025-05-20T18:37:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:37:21","slug":"updated-proposal-for-special-educational-needs-travel-support-approved-by-sheffield-city-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/05\/12\/updated-proposal-for-special-educational-needs-travel-support-approved-by-sheffield-city-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Updated Proposal for Students Travel Support Approved by Sheffield City Council"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sheffield City Council\u2019s Post-16 Travel Support policy has been updated and approved following the Education Committee\u2019s vote in favour of the new proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Wednesday, May 7th, the Education, Children and Family Policy Committee met and approved the expansion of the Independent Travel Training programme under the Post-16 Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Travel Support policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Officers Mark Sheikh and Paul Johnson presented the committee with the new proposal, including a business case involving the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The vote by the committee was the deciding factor in whether the business case with SYMCA would proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr Johnson said: \u201cThere are a lot of valuable things in the proposal, which will hopefully mean that in the long term, fewer young people have to use public transport because we have approached independence in a different way.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-08-at-16.55.58-1024x563.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-56591\" style=\"width:793px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-08-at-16.55.58-980x539.png 980w, https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-2025-05-08-at-16.55.58-480x264.png 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In December 2024, the committee requested a public consultation on replacing most Post-16 home-to-school transport with Personal Travel Budgets (PTBs), a move that led to the revised proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The revised proposal seeks to expand the recruitment program for Independent Travel trainers and enhance travel training for Post-16 students with SEND.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ms Gaynor Stevenson, mother of children who have participated in the Independent Travel Training programme, said: \u201cMy son Robert had never been on public transport on his own, now, we are about two-thirds of the way through the programme and two days a week he is independently travelling back and forth to Sixth Form\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Councillor Toby Mallinson, whose children also have benefited from the programme, said: \u201cWe were offered Independent Travel Training, which was fantastic because it gave my son and us as parents the confidence to be able to travel on his own\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The recruitment outlined in the revised proposal is set to take place between September and October, with a new batch of trainers expected to be in place by next year, joining the five already in service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Councillor Mohammed Mahroof emphasised that for the programme to succeed, it has to be \u2018the right way\u2019 and \u2018in the right climate\u2019 for it to happen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the council voted in favour of the revised proposal, amendments were made, including the continuation of the consultation with parents and regular feedback to the Education committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheffield City Council\u2019s Post-16 Travel Support policy has been updated and approved following the Education Committee\u2019s vote in favour of the new proposal. On Wednesday, May 7th, the Education, Children and Family Policy Committee met and approved the expansion of the Independent Travel Training programme under the Post-16 Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Travel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":56590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56589"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57383,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56589\/revisions\/57383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}